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The senate was never meant to represent people. It was meant to represent the interested of the states as sovereign entities. The house was supposed to be th

The senate was never meant to represent people. It was meant to represent the interested of the states as sovereign entities. The house was supposed to be the populist dumpster fire. But then some geniuses decided that we should direct elect both and have two dumpster fires.

soco 3y ago
That's an interesting take, to call democracy a dumpster fire. Some people I suppose would have rather kept their parties with tea.
turndown 3y ago
>But then some geniuses decided that we should direct elect both and have two dumpster fires. this was done because the election process via the state assemblies was so corrupt that Americans regularly made fun of the Senate for this fact.
- dsfyu404ed 3y ago
  Sure, but so was everything else the states did at the time and they did eventually clean up their act. It's hard to say whether direct electing the senate was good or bad because it's not like there's a control country we can compare to. It certainly gave the states as entities less influence which is probably not great.
  - beachy 3y ago
    You could compare it to the UK's House of Lords, where seats are (unbelievably to me) hereditary - passed down from toffs to their children.
    - derefr 3y ago
      I've always thought of the House of Lords as a descriptive, rather that prescriptive, power structure. You don't intentionally design peerage into a system of government. Rather, you've just got these people who are, at the time of the government's founding, equally powerful (at least in sum) to the government — thus, peers to the government. These people can do whatever they like; they can even have their own private standing armies et al, because your own standing army — the military — isn't powerful enough yet to prevent that. Thus, you have to give these powerful people a seat at the table, or they'll challenge the legitimacy of your government (or maybe even just get together to overthrow it.) Maybe that's even what they were just doing, until you got them to calm down and talk to you. One might say that the whole process of establishing a government out of a feudal or contested state, is the bringing of these "peers" to a common table, convincing them that it's in their best interests to solve their problems with the nascent government using plain in-the-open debate, rather than violence or subtle manipulation. Whereever the peers meet to have that open debate, then, is a de-facto "House of Lords." It doesn't need any laws about it to make it so. The laws grow up over time to enshrine what would be happening regardless. And in that light, the way "appointment to" a Westminster-system House of Lords works, makes total sense. The government isn't granting people a seat at the table just because; rather, it's tracing the transfer of political power through dynastic inheritance (and explicitly stamping whoever received it with a heritable noble title, so that there's no argument about who the government thinks received the political power.) This is also why noble titles can be extinguished — if nobody directly inherits a lump of political power, then there should no longer be a seat at the table for "the person who currently holds that lump of political power." The ideal end to a House of Lords, AFAICT, is that eventually all the noble titles go extinct; all the seats are removed; and the House becomes obsolete. I'm not aware of that having ever happened yet anywhere, but it seems to be the intention from the start of every government. (The American system, at first glance, is incompatible with this end; but it could in theory have approached it, if the American people had been less fans of federalism, and had instead insisted that their own states revert to territories in exchange for seats allocated in a central parliament. I think this could have even been likely, in an alternate world where any of the colonies went down a monarchic or oligarchic route with their state governments.)
      - gehwartzen 3y ago
        > This is also why noble titles can be extinguished — if nobody directly inherits a lump of political power, then there should no longer be a seat at the table for "the person who currently holds that lump of political power." Isn’t this “lump of power” just monetary wealth, property, social connections etc? Why does it have to be passed onto a relative instead of any other individual the current power holder chooses?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Why does it have to be passed onto a relative instead of any other individual the current power holder chooses? Rarely people were "adopted". But generally because any relative who might be in line to the power would also have enough power to object to the inheritance passing to another. The hundred years' war was bad enough between two states. Having it within a state is not something the state wants.
        derefr 3y ago
        The 101-level crash-course on this is CGP Grey's video Death & Dynasties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU. In est, your "social connections" — Grey's "keys to power" — value stability of their own powerful positions in your government (or noble house, or family-run utility company/industry monopoly, or whatever other forms lumps of power can take.) The key-holders' own political power exists regardless, but whether it translates to active ability to affect change right this moment depends on favor of the current ruler. Who better to place their bets on, then, as a replacement for a ruler who will continue to favor them — a ruler who will ensure the stability of the previous ruler's power base — than someone the previous ruler has been grooming for that very job from birth? But I would argue that, at least for non-totalitarian states, there's also another, more interesting and crucial influence on what makes power legitimate. When governments and noble houses generate revenue and get things done through free people who they employ or contract — not slaves or serfs or indentured servants — then it's the opinion of those free people on who is the legitimate next ruler, that actually determines who the legitimate next ruler will be. In a non-totalitarian state, a ruler cannot rule without the will of the people. To do otherwise provokes a populist-led revolution to abolish the seat of power altogether. Looking at how lines of succession of royal seats of power work/are calculated can be enlightening, because there's a certain point where the rules cross over from "what anyone actually a part of the current royal house would want" into "what the population thinks makes someone a legitimate heir." (The particular thing the population thinks makes someone a legitimate ruler, is usually a result of a centuries-long propaganda campaign by those in power; but no individual who wants power can entirely overwrite that belief during a succession crisis, which is the important thing here.) Here's the way this works for the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46N-bulO-aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46N-bulO-aM Note in the above, the people that get referred to as "royals" and have little crown icons. Those are the people that the existing ruler grooms as potential replacements, trying to get them established in the minds of their power base. But note how there are so many other candidates to succession outside of this small group. These other candidates are there not because the royal family would rather transfer power to them, but rather because the will of the people in this case is to follow this weird rule (patrilineal primogeniture) wherever it takes them. (Which is a kind of rule-utilitarianism, in the sense that a society notoriously following this rule wherever it may lead, tends to result in the fewest wars of succession.) If Westminster gets hit with a nuke one day, and all the current UK "royals" die — and then some con-artist pops up who was living in Morocco, and claims that they're the secret son-by-marriage-twice-removed of the Earl of Sandwich — then what that person is trying to do, is to claim legitimacy in the eyes of the people. They don't hold any of the current "keys to power"; but they think they might be able to step into those relationships and be accepted by those "keys to power", if they can first get the people who work for those key-holders seeing them as the key-holders' new legitimate boss. This is also true when deciding who initially forms government in a feudal/contested state. Who "won" the War of the Roses, between the houses of Lancaster and York? The entirely-separate House of Tudor. The houses of Lancaster and York, through their violent conflict, ended up killing all the groomed male heirs of both houses — making them both invalid choices for succession in the eyes of the people (because patrilineal primogeniture), and in the eyes of the "keys to power" (because no established relationships left with anyone in those houses.) And yes, this all still applies even in a country with democratic elections. Most modern democracies are templated off the Westminster system, and so don't directly elect a president, but rather elect a legislature who in turn appoint a Prime Minister, like a corporate board of directors appointing a CEO. Guess who's getting appointed? Someone with established relationships with keys to power; perhaps hereditary ones. (Consider: Justin Trudeau.) For countries that directly elect a president and have term limits, the choice might seem to be more in the hands of the people... and often is, at the country's founding. But you then get a primacy of political parties as noble-house-esque government-in-waiting entities, each trying to find and groom politicians into figureheads for the "party line", such that it's actually the party, and not the individual, that establishes the continuous key-holder relationships and carries them forward. The political party acts in lieu of a noble dynasty as the immortal entity conferring stability-of-power to key-holders. The one way in which political parties aren't just noble houses, is that they will sometimes voluntarily allow outside entities who don't "toe the party line", to come in and take over for a bit — if those outsiders hold their own lumps of power. For a noble house, this would be suicide—they'd be "overwritten" by the outsider's new dynasty. But a political party will continue on just as they were afterward... but now having absorbed and digested the key-holder relationships that the outsider brought with them, into itself. (Consider: Donald Trump.) Though, note, noble houses do absorb external key-holder relationships — they do it through political marriages.
    - robotresearcher 3y ago
      Hereditary peers are gradually being phased out over a series of reforms over the last 200 years. Only about 10% of current peers are hereditary.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        And the House of Lords has very limited influence.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    There’s a complex relationship here; the change diminished all states greatly, in favor of passing power to their citizens, but it also empowered the citizens of the big empty states in a way that the citizens of the small urban states were already empowered. It occurs to me after typing this that when you said “as entities” you were probably alluding to this dichotomy.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    It did no such thing. It gave state legislatures less influence in Federal governance. If you’re a big believer in the mythological principles of US government, the idea of people electing representatives shouldn’t be seen as a diminishing of the state. State power is endowed by the creator to the people. Legislatures aren’t states. The governor is the head of state executing the laws of the people as expressed by the legislature.
    - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      The concept of a Federal government was only expanded in recent (post Commerce clause) times. Historically, the government was meant to be a thin layer uniting a bunch of States together. Within that framework, the Senate made more sense; it was meant to be more of a UN of the States than a representative body. The Constitution throughout was a balance between populist and non-populist interests as the founders had a strong distrust of purely populist rule. If you're a believer in the somewhat more modern American ideal of a purely populist government then yes, the current Senate makes more sense, but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Historically, the government was meant to be a thin layer uniting a bunch of States together. This has been an argument since the beginning. The thinnest layer (Confederation) was found non-viable and was replaced by a somewhat thicker layer after about six years. There was a lot of argument then, and a lot of argument after the fact, leading to thinning and thickening of the layer. > but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous. Or, under the previous system, why Senators were elected for 6 year terms when they would more easily represent the states' current interests with 2 year terms.
        singleshot_ 3y ago
        As it turns out, compared to endless war, global economic whipsaw manipulation, climate crisis, mass incarceration, widespread poverty, and heavily entrenched political corruption, the Articles of Confederation actually were pretty viable.
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    I like the idea of moving back to having the Senate controlled by the States, I think it would help clean up some of the mess. I disagree on the point that the states have cleaned up their act, what has happened is that the Federal government has taken on more power and responsibility from the States, for better and worse. Meanwhile, people have become more disconnected from their state politics and only focus on the federal. Up to the point of blaming the federal government for not acting when it is the state's responsibility.
  - turndown 3y ago
    I did not really like how fast and loose with history you were, so I will just say that they did not clean up their act on their own, but were forced to. Many things have been forced on the states judicially, brown v board of education, baker v Carr/wesberry v sanders/reynolds v sims all forced more equitable voting schemes(ie, handling gerrymandering) etc are some easy examples I could think of for how your idea that the states figured themselves out is a misconception.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
blululu 3y ago
>>some geniuses A super majority of both the house and senate with 3/4 of all state legislatures in accordance with the intention of the original founders that people update things as the times change?
Spooky23 3y ago
Lol. That was done to placate the slave owners. Just like modern reactionary politics isn’t good for people or popular, the biggest fear of slave owners was that free whites would figure out that slaves gutted the value of their labors. It doesn’t take a “genius” to figure out that having state legislatures select federal legislators is foolish. Anyone suggesting that the US Senate as constituted for the last century is a populist institution may require institutional help of another kind.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  While I agree that oligarchy has been the order of the day for some time, perhaps always, it is not self evident that having hierarchical elections is somehow worse than direct votes for people we see talk briefly on TV. I would actually prefer that I always get to choose between people I actually know face to face, that in turn select diminishing numbers of people. When we vote for sound bites it is simply a matter of who can comvince us they believe our own hastily formed opinions predicated on subpar government, economics, and history education combined with a complete lack of relevant work experience are in fact correct. If I select between my neighbors, it would be based on my perception of their character, and the ability to spot both expertise and bs.
- dsfyu404ed 3y ago
  > Lol. That was done to placate the slave owners. The 17th amendment was passed ~50yr after the civil war, a point in time when the overwhelming majority of the electorate had no memory of overt slavery and the people who did or who's parents did were even less influential than before due to immigration waves and industrialization (which concentrated population money and power in the northeast and Midwest generally speaking). Please f right off with your revisionist history. >Anyone suggesting that the US Senate as constituted for the last century is a populist institution may require institutional help of another kind. This is rich coming from the guy that just said an amendment passed in the 1900s was done to placate slave owners. Regardless of the intent of the amendment, only a complete fool would claim that making appointed positions directly elected doesn't make the body formed by those positions more subject to populist sentiments than it previously was. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that direct electing the senate is a bad thing but it doesn't take a genius to look at the situation before and after and see that there are pros and cons to both. Like you can literally pick up a history book and look at the influences the senate was beholden to and strongly pushed around by before and after the change.

soco 3y ago

That's an interesting take, to call democracy a dumpster fire. Some people I suppose would have rather kept their parties with tea.

turndown 3y ago

>But then some geniuses decided that we should direct elect both and have two dumpster fires. this was done because the election process via the state assemblies was so corrupt that Americans regularly made fun of the Senate for this fact.

dsfyu404ed 3y ago
Sure, but so was everything else the states did at the time and they did eventually clean up their act. It's hard to say whether direct electing the senate was good or bad because it's not like there's a control country we can compare to. It certainly gave the states as entities less influence which is probably not great.
- beachy 3y ago
  You could compare it to the UK's House of Lords, where seats are (unbelievably to me) hereditary - passed down from toffs to their children.
  - derefr 3y ago
    I've always thought of the House of Lords as a descriptive, rather that prescriptive, power structure. You don't intentionally design peerage into a system of government. Rather, you've just got these people who are, at the time of the government's founding, equally powerful (at least in sum) to the government — thus, peers to the government. These people can do whatever they like; they can even have their own private standing armies et al, because your own standing army — the military — isn't powerful enough yet to prevent that. Thus, you have to give these powerful people a seat at the table, or they'll challenge the legitimacy of your government (or maybe even just get together to overthrow it.) Maybe that's even what they were just doing, until you got them to calm down and talk to you. One might say that the whole process of establishing a government out of a feudal or contested state, is the bringing of these "peers" to a common table, convincing them that it's in their best interests to solve their problems with the nascent government using plain in-the-open debate, rather than violence or subtle manipulation. Whereever the peers meet to have that open debate, then, is a de-facto "House of Lords." It doesn't need any laws about it to make it so. The laws grow up over time to enshrine what would be happening regardless. And in that light, the way "appointment to" a Westminster-system House of Lords works, makes total sense. The government isn't granting people a seat at the table just because; rather, it's tracing the transfer of political power through dynastic inheritance (and explicitly stamping whoever received it with a heritable noble title, so that there's no argument about who the government thinks received the political power.) This is also why noble titles can be extinguished — if nobody directly inherits a lump of political power, then there should no longer be a seat at the table for "the person who currently holds that lump of political power." The ideal end to a House of Lords, AFAICT, is that eventually all the noble titles go extinct; all the seats are removed; and the House becomes obsolete. I'm not aware of that having ever happened yet anywhere, but it seems to be the intention from the start of every government. (The American system, at first glance, is incompatible with this end; but it could in theory have approached it, if the American people had been less fans of federalism, and had instead insisted that their own states revert to territories in exchange for seats allocated in a central parliament. I think this could have even been likely, in an alternate world where any of the colonies went down a monarchic or oligarchic route with their state governments.)
    - gehwartzen 3y ago
      > This is also why noble titles can be extinguished — if nobody directly inherits a lump of political power, then there should no longer be a seat at the table for "the person who currently holds that lump of political power." Isn’t this “lump of power” just monetary wealth, property, social connections etc? Why does it have to be passed onto a relative instead of any other individual the current power holder chooses?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Why does it have to be passed onto a relative instead of any other individual the current power holder chooses? Rarely people were "adopted". But generally because any relative who might be in line to the power would also have enough power to object to the inheritance passing to another. The hundred years' war was bad enough between two states. Having it within a state is not something the state wants.
      - derefr 3y ago
        The 101-level crash-course on this is CGP Grey's video Death & Dynasties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU. In est, your "social connections" — Grey's "keys to power" — value stability of their own powerful positions in your government (or noble house, or family-run utility company/industry monopoly, or whatever other forms lumps of power can take.) The key-holders' own political power exists regardless, but whether it translates to active ability to affect change right this moment depends on favor of the current ruler. Who better to place their bets on, then, as a replacement for a ruler who will continue to favor them — a ruler who will ensure the stability of the previous ruler's power base — than someone the previous ruler has been grooming for that very job from birth? But I would argue that, at least for non-totalitarian states, there's also another, more interesting and crucial influence on what makes power legitimate. When governments and noble houses generate revenue and get things done through free people who they employ or contract — not slaves or serfs or indentured servants — then it's the opinion of those free people on who is the legitimate next ruler, that actually determines who the legitimate next ruler will be. In a non-totalitarian state, a ruler cannot rule without the will of the people. To do otherwise provokes a populist-led revolution to abolish the seat of power altogether. Looking at how lines of succession of royal seats of power work/are calculated can be enlightening, because there's a certain point where the rules cross over from "what anyone actually a part of the current royal house would want" into "what the population thinks makes someone a legitimate heir." (The particular thing the population thinks makes someone a legitimate ruler, is usually a result of a centuries-long propaganda campaign by those in power; but no individual who wants power can entirely overwrite that belief during a succession crisis, which is the important thing here.) Here's the way this works for the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46N-bulO-aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46N-bulO-aM Note in the above, the people that get referred to as "royals" and have little crown icons. Those are the people that the existing ruler grooms as potential replacements, trying to get them established in the minds of their power base. But note how there are so many other candidates to succession outside of this small group. These other candidates are there not because the royal family would rather transfer power to them, but rather because the will of the people in this case is to follow this weird rule (patrilineal primogeniture) wherever it takes them. (Which is a kind of rule-utilitarianism, in the sense that a society notoriously following this rule wherever it may lead, tends to result in the fewest wars of succession.) If Westminster gets hit with a nuke one day, and all the current UK "royals" die — and then some con-artist pops up who was living in Morocco, and claims that they're the secret son-by-marriage-twice-removed of the Earl of Sandwich — then what that person is trying to do, is to claim legitimacy in the eyes of the people. They don't hold any of the current "keys to power"; but they think they might be able to step into those relationships and be accepted by those "keys to power", if they can first get the people who work for those key-holders seeing them as the key-holders' new legitimate boss. This is also true when deciding who initially forms government in a feudal/contested state. Who "won" the War of the Roses, between the houses of Lancaster and York? The entirely-separate House of Tudor. The houses of Lancaster and York, through their violent conflict, ended up killing all the groomed male heirs of both houses — making them both invalid choices for succession in the eyes of the people (because patrilineal primogeniture), and in the eyes of the "keys to power" (because no established relationships left with anyone in those houses.) And yes, this all still applies even in a country with democratic elections. Most modern democracies are templated off the Westminster system, and so don't directly elect a president, but rather elect a legislature who in turn appoint a Prime Minister, like a corporate board of directors appointing a CEO. Guess who's getting appointed? Someone with established relationships with keys to power; perhaps hereditary ones. (Consider: Justin Trudeau.) For countries that directly elect a president and have term limits, the choice might seem to be more in the hands of the people... and often is, at the country's founding. But you then get a primacy of political parties as noble-house-esque government-in-waiting entities, each trying to find and groom politicians into figureheads for the "party line", such that it's actually the party, and not the individual, that establishes the continuous key-holder relationships and carries them forward. The political party acts in lieu of a noble dynasty as the immortal entity conferring stability-of-power to key-holders. The one way in which political parties aren't just noble houses, is that they will sometimes voluntarily allow outside entities who don't "toe the party line", to come in and take over for a bit — if those outsiders hold their own lumps of power. For a noble house, this would be suicide—they'd be "overwritten" by the outsider's new dynasty. But a political party will continue on just as they were afterward... but now having absorbed and digested the key-holder relationships that the outsider brought with them, into itself. (Consider: Donald Trump.) Though, note, noble houses do absorb external key-holder relationships — they do it through political marriages.
  - robotresearcher 3y ago
    Hereditary peers are gradually being phased out over a series of reforms over the last 200 years. Only about 10% of current peers are hereditary.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      And the House of Lords has very limited influence.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  There’s a complex relationship here; the change diminished all states greatly, in favor of passing power to their citizens, but it also empowered the citizens of the big empty states in a way that the citizens of the small urban states were already empowered. It occurs to me after typing this that when you said “as entities” you were probably alluding to this dichotomy.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  It did no such thing. It gave state legislatures less influence in Federal governance. If you’re a big believer in the mythological principles of US government, the idea of people electing representatives shouldn’t be seen as a diminishing of the state. State power is endowed by the creator to the people. Legislatures aren’t states. The governor is the head of state executing the laws of the people as expressed by the legislature.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    The concept of a Federal government was only expanded in recent (post Commerce clause) times. Historically, the government was meant to be a thin layer uniting a bunch of States together. Within that framework, the Senate made more sense; it was meant to be more of a UN of the States than a representative body. The Constitution throughout was a balance between populist and non-populist interests as the founders had a strong distrust of purely populist rule. If you're a believer in the somewhat more modern American ideal of a purely populist government then yes, the current Senate makes more sense, but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > Historically, the government was meant to be a thin layer uniting a bunch of States together. This has been an argument since the beginning. The thinnest layer (Confederation) was found non-viable and was replaced by a somewhat thicker layer after about six years. There was a lot of argument then, and a lot of argument after the fact, leading to thinning and thickening of the layer. > but then it doesn't make sense as to why the Senate grants equal power to each state no matter how populous. Or, under the previous system, why Senators were elected for 6 year terms when they would more easily represent the states' current interests with 2 year terms.
      - singleshot_ 3y ago
        As it turns out, compared to endless war, global economic whipsaw manipulation, climate crisis, mass incarceration, widespread poverty, and heavily entrenched political corruption, the Articles of Confederation actually were pretty viable.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  I like the idea of moving back to having the Senate controlled by the States, I think it would help clean up some of the mess. I disagree on the point that the states have cleaned up their act, what has happened is that the Federal government has taken on more power and responsibility from the States, for better and worse. Meanwhile, people have become more disconnected from their state politics and only focus on the federal. Up to the point of blaming the federal government for not acting when it is the state's responsibility.
- turndown 3y ago
  I did not really like how fast and loose with history you were, so I will just say that they did not clean up their act on their own, but were forced to. Many things have been forced on the states judicially, brown v board of education, baker v Carr/wesberry v sanders/reynolds v sims all forced more equitable voting schemes(ie, handling gerrymandering) etc are some easy examples I could think of for how your idea that the states figured themselves out is a misconception.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

blululu 3y ago

>>some geniuses A super majority of both the house and senate with 3/4 of all state legislatures in accordance with the intention of the original founders that people update things as the times change?

Spooky23 3y ago

Lol. That was done to placate the slave owners. Just like modern reactionary politics isn’t good for people or popular, the biggest fear of slave owners was that free whites would figure out that slaves gutted the value of their labors. It doesn’t take a “genius” to figure out that having state legislatures select federal legislators is foolish. Anyone suggesting that the US Senate as constituted for the last century is a populist institution may require institutional help of another kind.

galangalalgol 3y ago
While I agree that oligarchy has been the order of the day for some time, perhaps always, it is not self evident that having hierarchical elections is somehow worse than direct votes for people we see talk briefly on TV. I would actually prefer that I always get to choose between people I actually know face to face, that in turn select diminishing numbers of people. When we vote for sound bites it is simply a matter of who can comvince us they believe our own hastily formed opinions predicated on subpar government, economics, and history education combined with a complete lack of relevant work experience are in fact correct. If I select between my neighbors, it would be based on my perception of their character, and the ability to spot both expertise and bs.
dsfyu404ed 3y ago
> Lol. That was done to placate the slave owners. The 17th amendment was passed ~50yr after the civil war, a point in time when the overwhelming majority of the electorate had no memory of overt slavery and the people who did or who's parents did were even less influential than before due to immigration waves and industrialization (which concentrated population money and power in the northeast and Midwest generally speaking). Please f right off with your revisionist history. >Anyone suggesting that the US Senate as constituted for the last century is a populist institution may require institutional help of another kind. This is rich coming from the guy that just said an amendment passed in the 1900s was done to placate slave owners. Regardless of the intent of the amendment, only a complete fool would claim that making appointed positions directly elected doesn't make the body formed by those positions more subject to populist sentiments than it previously was. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that direct electing the senate is a bad thing but it doesn't take a genius to look at the situation before and after and see that there are pros and cons to both. Like you can literally pick up a history book and look at the influences the senate was beholden to and strongly pushed around by before and after the change.